Suggestions for AI Improvements

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Furio

It worked quite well for the Tuskegee Airmen, probably the best escort fighter unit ever.

Multiple fighters chasing a single hostile aircraft, or breaking formation to go hunting on their own, was a matter of experience and unit discipline and is an old problem. It's listed in the Dicta Boelke as "a thing not to do."

As for the "Tuskeegee Airmen," the 332d FS was basically following U.S. doctrine, but they excelled because they had remarkable "esprit de corps," a superior pilot pool, a high standard of training, and good leadership. The "Redtails" had a point that they wanted to prove, and went about proving it in exemplary fashion. Although their reputation for "never losing a bomber" is a myth, they were noteworthy for low losses among bombers they were assigned to escort.

Originally Posted by Furio

Once in landing pattern, AIs have a constrained behaviour. If attacked, they do make evasive manoeuvres, but never fight back and return to pattern as soon as possible. This behaviour could be, perhaps, used for escort fighters, with appropriate tweaking.

This is another good point, and one that's easily fixed.

* Aircraft shouldn't enter the landing pattern until they're sure there are not hostile aircraft about.

* If there are hostile aircraft present, they abandon the landing behavior, and behave as if they're still in the combat zone.

This is a simple fix to the existing AI.

More advanced landing options:

* If they're forced to land (due to damage or low fuel) when hostile aircraft are present, then the rest of the flight/squadron should give top cover to the aircraft which is landing.

* If possible, aircraft should try to lure hostile aircraft into areas where friendly flak can attack them.

* Aircraft with wounded crew aboard land first. Badly damaged land-based aircraft land second. Possibly, aircraft could shoot/drop flares to indicate priority landing (radio calls weren't used to avoid giving intelligence to the enemy).

* If there are multiple airfields in the area, badly damaged aircraft which are likely to crash divert to secondary/emergency landing strips to keep the main airfield clear.

* Damaged carrier aircraft which are still capable of making a carrier landing land last. Badly damaged carrier aircraft which are incapable of making a carrier landing ditch alongside the carrier or an escorting ship rather than attempting to land.

* If a multi-crew aircraft is badly damaged so that it is unlikely to be able to land safely, and it is over friendly, populated territory, all crew but the pilot (possibly co-pilot) and badly wounded crew will bail out if it is possible to safely do so. The pilot(s) will then make an attempt to land the plane with wounded crew aboard.

* Planes with landing gear failure, which must crash land rather than landing normally, will "belly land" alongside the runway, rather than on it. This keeps the main runway clear.

Originally Posted by Furio

Then, I would have a simple wish: the possibility to mark as destroyed… a destroyed plane, or a clearly doomed one. Something like the order: “Don’t shoot to this target anymore”.

Technically, you can control AI planes in your formation by telling them to "rejoin formation." But, that's inconvenient and doesn't always work.

I've suggested a fix for friendly AI breaking off attacks on damaged or destroyed enemies, but perhaps you didn't notice it.

Currently, IL2 has an "Arcade Mode" where AI aircraft produce "cartoon thought bubbles" when they take certain kinds of damage. Messages include "I'm On Fire" (i.e., fatal damage), "Returning to Base" (i.e., severe damage) and "Bailing Out" (AI recognizes that damage is fatal).

It would be very simple for AI programming to use these messages from Arcade Mode to decide when AI crew should bail out, when attackers should stop shooting, and when a player (or AI aircraft) should get credit for a kill.

Rather than victory credit, or shared credit, going to the pilot who fired the last bullet, credit should go to the pilot who inflicted the fatal damage (i.e., the one who caused the damage that triggered the "I'm on Fire" or "I'm Bailing Out" message).

Pilots should get shared kill credit for damage which triggers the "RTB" message.

For Air Forces which tracked such things, it should also be possible to get "probable kill" credit for any damage which triggers the "RTB" message. And "damaged" credit for any hit at all to an enemy plane.

Once the scoring system is trained to recognize "damaged," "severe damage" and "fatal damage", then it would be possible to have more complex scoring systems, like those used by the Germans for awarding points towards medals.

Herausschuss (Separation) = RTB
Abschuss (Destruction) = I'm on Fire/Bailing Out
Endgueltige Vernichtung (Final Destruction) = I'm on Fire/Bailing Out result on a plane that's already received enough damage that it's RTB.

Kill claiming could be made more strict (for Air Forces which required such things) by only giving credit for kills made over friendly land territory, or in the presence of at least one other friendly unit (including ships and ground units).

Kill claiming could be made less strict by allowing pilots who achieved an "RTB" result to claim a "kill" rather than a probable. This would allow two pilots to both get kill credit for a single aircraft (and would mimic historical rates of kill claims for fighter pilots).

Kill claiming could be made much less strict by allowing pilots who inflicted any damage on an aircraft at all to count it as a kill! This would be good for "duels to the first blood" and would mimic historical rates of kill claims for air gunners and pilots in air forces where kill claims were accepted based on the pilot's word.